Getting an A on an English Paper

Citation

What to Cite

Knowing how to cite is important, but let's start by
discussing what to cite and why.

Here's the short formulation:

If you had to look it up, you have to cite it.

That means any direct quotation from a book (or movie
or Web site or whatever), however short, should be cited.

It also means that any fact you've taken from your
reading should be cited. The only exception is “common
knowledge” — if something is widely known, you
needn't say you read it in any particular source. So, for
instance, if you want to point out in passing that February is
the shortest month, there's no need to footnote it. It's usually
not necessary to cite encyclopedias or dictionaries for something
widely reported in other sources. But if you quote their exact
words, cite them.

How do you know when something is “common
knowledge”? As a rule of thumb, if you're in doubt, cite
it. Few professors will object to too many citations, but we get
grumpy when things that should be
cited aren't.

Why to Cite

That's what to cite. How about why? It's not
just a matter of performing arbitrary gestures to keep your
professors happy; citation is serious business. It amounts to
putting your intellectual cards on the table. It allows a reader
to check your facts, and to follow up your argument by returning
to the sources you used. It also shows that you understand what
you've read, and that you're not simply regurgitating what you've
found.

How to Cite

Now, how do you cite something? There are several
competing standards; your professors may prefer one over the
others, but they're all equally “right.” Different
disciplines (math, psychology, medicine) have their own styles,
but there are two common ones in American English classes,
Chicago style (named for the Chicago Manual of
Style, now in its fourteenth edition) and MLA
style (named for the Modern Language Association, which
publishes the appropriate guidebook). If you're an English major,
you should probably pony up the dough for the MLA guide.

There are two main places you can cite your sources: one is in
footnotes (or endnotes); the other is in a list of
works cited.

The usual rule for footnotes is to provide a
complete citation the first time you cite something — “Jane
Smith, A Sample Book (New York: Knopf, 1993), p.
123” — and then to put subsequent citations in the text in
an abbreviated form — “(Smith, p. 123).” You don't need a
separate bibliography, since you provide full details the first
time you cite each work. It's usual to put the author's name in
first-name-last-name order. The Chicago Manual of
Style usually prefers this style of citation.

The rule for works cited is to put a brief citation in
parentheses in the text — “(Smith 123)” — even on the
first appearance, and then to have a separate bibliography
(usually headed “Works Cited”) at the end of the paper. Since
your works cited are listed alphabetically by author, you list
them last-name-comma-first-name. The MLA favors this style.

Examples

Here are some standard citation formats, as they appear in
both Chicago and MLA. First a book, then a
journal article, then a book article:

One thing you don't usually have to cite with similar
precision is a reference book. If
you want to quote the Oxford English
Dictionary, for instance, you needn't spell out the
volume and page numbers; ditto for encyclopedias. (It's
understood that you found the information on the word
mulct under the word mulct.) If, though, you
discover something in a different entry from the obvious
one — if, for instance, you find information about Einstein
in the encyclopedia not under “Einstein, Albert,” but
in the general entry on “Physics” — you can use
“s.v.” (Latin sub verbo, “under the
word”) to indicate the source: “See
Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v.
‘Physics.’”

Problems

There are plenty of difficult cases, and I haven't the time to
explain them here. How, for instance, do you cite episodes of
television programs? — government documents? —
corporate annual reports? — interviews you conduct? —
information gleaned in an on-line chat? Standards for most of
these are in the major style guides (Chicago and
MLA), though the Internet presents a moving target for
bibliographers.

Teachers will vary, but as a rule, I don't worry too much
about getting such tricky cases “right.” After all,
there isn't necessarily a single “right.” All I need
is a good-faith effort to document the source of the information.
That will usually include the author's name (if it's known), the
title of the work, the larger work of which it's a part, the date
it appeared, and the publisher — whatever applies.